Cherchez La Femme

EXHIBITIONS - 16 MAY - 13 JUL 2014 ANNEXE - CHERCHEZ LA FEMME Feminist videos produced by French activist / militant collectives in the 1970s. Organized by Alaina Claire Feldman. There exists a rich history of radical, pioneering feminist video collectives in France that is largely unknown to Anglophone audiences and is still to be recognized in the Western canon of visual studies and activist history. In France, in the early 1970s, several activist collectives such as Vidéa (1974, Anne- Marie Faure, Isabelle Fraisse, Syn Guerin and Catherine Lahourcade) and Insoumuses (1975, Carole Roussopoulos, Delphine Seyrig and Iona Wieder) composed almost entirely of women took up the new portable video camera as an immediate and accessible tool to promote feminism, class and gender consciousness, direct democracy, and political action - all central ideals during the May ‘68 student movements in France and within second-wave feminism. They collectively produced videos (explicitly not artworks) that exploited the medium for their own sociopolitical agendas and self-representation at a time when society did not expect women to embrace technology. When the Sony Portapak became the first portable video camera on the market in France in 1967, it was considerably cheaper than film, had an immediate turn-around production time, and had no history or social formalities yet, which enabled the tool to be taken up by these collectives simultaneous to the emerging feminist movement. Still rarely addressed even in France, the history of these videos and their political content suggest an alternative narrative departing from well-known Anglo-American male dominated collectives such as Ant Farm and TVTV or individuals such as Nam June Paik, Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, Martha Rosler and others. In The Second Sex (1947) Simone de Beauvoir calls for solidarity and self-organization among women. Evidently echoing this call, these collectives began sharing sources, equipment, technical skills, common goals and interests to create new representations of female behavior and resist segregation and discrimination. The videos in this presentation are just a small selection of the hundreds in the collection of the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir in Paris and even more which have been lost over the years. Translated to English in 2012 for an American premiere at the Kitchen by Alaina Claire Feldman and Stephanie Jeanjean, they are meant to introduce marginalized forms of feminist organization in France and to look for the women who resisted normativity by creating their own identities. List of works Main screen: 1) Jean Genet parle d’Angela Davis (Jean Genet speaks about Angela Davis) Vidéo Out: Carole Roussopoulos, Paul Roussopoulos 1970, 10min In 1970 Jean Genet was invited by French state television (ORTF) to talk about Angela Davis, the communist and feminist member of the Black Panthers arrested by FBI and imprisoned in the United States. Suspecting that his intervention may be censored, Genet asks Carole Roussopoulos to go along and film everything with her camera. Despite his efforts, Genet cannot reach the necessary fluidity of words, but precisely for this reason his words remain engraved in the mind of the audience: a libertarian and apocalyptic pamphle filled with mul- tiple stresses. This is Carole Roussopoulos first preserved video, shot within the television system, and against it. 2) Kate Millet Parle de la Prostitution avec des Féministes (Kate Millet speaks about prostitution with feminists) Vidéa: SYN GUÉRIN & CATHERINE LAHOURCADE June 1975, 20’0 min An informal meeting of Kate Millet, Monique Wittig, Christine Delphy and others to discuss the relationship between feminism and prostitution, starting from Kate Millet’s report on prostitution that had just been translated into French. Sitting on the floor, showing total complicity and familiarity, the women talk together and for us as the camera casually follows their gestures. The theme is topical: is it possible to distinguish between prostitutes and prostitution, to defend the former and condemn the latter? Screen 2 (far left corner) MASO ET MISO VONT EN BATEAU (Maso and Miso go boating) Insoumuses: CAROLE ROUSSOPOULOS, DELPHINE SEYRIG, IONA WIEDER & NADIA RINGART 1976, 55’00 A witty reflection on the dumbness of television, the power of media and woman’s position in public life. Françoise Giroud, scriptwriter, journalist, writer and Minister for Women’s Condition from 1974, is invited to a TV show that “celebrates” the end of the “Year of the Woman” declared by the UN for 1975 (“one more day and the year of the woman, phew, is over!”). Delphine Seyrig records the show and with three women, friends and comrades, start to criticize it and re-invent it with rage, intelligence and humour. A social satire, that winks at the beautiful all-woman movie Céline et Julie vont en bateau by Jacques Rivette and develops into a joyful game of disassembly and superimposition. Screen 3) (centre, far wall) SOIS BELLE ET TAIS-TOI! (Be pretty and shut up!) Insoumuses: Delphine Seyrig 1976, 115’0 A behind-the-scenes look of the mechanisms of film production monopolized by men who reduce women in an array of and stereotyped roles. Between Los Angeles and Paris, Delphine Seyrig interviews 22 actresses on their job, including Maria Schneider, Jane Fonda, Viva and Shirley MacLaine. Delphine asks Carole to keep the camera on a tripod and to film medium close-ups, as often done for politicians, to enhance their words to the utmost. But in this case, the simplicity of the device used, the domestic spaces and the all-woman closeness structurally deny the word of the economic and male power: emotions come out of the words and the voices of the women. And Carole’s fixed angle does not stop the shot from vibrating during the whole film: although centered around the actresses, the camera is never motionless and some slight zooms underline the participation of the camerawoman. The title, which is borrowed from a 1958 film with the same name by Marc Allegret, refers to the sense the actresses have of what is expected of them by the film industry. Screen 4 (right of entrance) HUIT MARS 1975 Vidéa: ANNE-MARIE FAURE-FRAISSE, ISABELLE FRAISSE, SYN GUÉRIN, CATHERINE LAHOURCADE 1975, 20’00 8 Mars 1975 (“8 March 1975”) by the collective Vidéa, is a video concerned with the “Year of the Woman”, a celebration declared by the United Nations that was widely criticized by French feminists as a “mystification.” On March 8, 1975, women from all affinity and independent groups not belonging to any official parties decided to demonstrate in the streets of Paris in order to claim their rights and demand change in patriarchal society. Footage of demonstrations alternate with voice-overs, banners, maxims (including witty word play), and songs that allow them to express their own voices in a lighthearted atmosphere. For example, one banner reads “1975 YEAR OF THE WOMAN, 1976 YEAR OF THE DOG, 1977 YEAR OF THE HORSE”. S.C.U.M. MANIFESTO Insoumuses: CAROLE ROUSSOPOULOS & DELPHINE SEYRIG August 1976 27’25 S.C.U.M. Manifesto (1967) is the title of an explosive booklet by Valerie Solanas, better-known for shooting Andy Warhol. S.C.U.M. stands for Society for Cutting Up Men: Solanas already a victim of abuse from her father launches a deep rooted attack on male power. Delphine and Carole act in the film and stage a reading: we see one of them translating from English and dictating to the other, who is typing. Almost like a metaphor of her work as a camerawoman and director, Carole Roussopoulos sits at the typewriter to learn from her friend, but most of all to write down the words of a woman who cries out the words of thousands other women. Reflexive, simple and refined, the video fuses three heterogeneous elements: the home-like scenario set up by the two directors, the 8 p.m. TV news and Solanas’ manifesto. Following the two women’s rhythm, Paul Roussopoulos operates the zoom and moves the attention back and forth, on the TV images related to war and men of power, and on the two women again, ending with a big demonstration of Irish women. After thousands of years of misogynous pamphlets, the answer is biting and healthy for all of us: a manifesto for the male liberation Movement..

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